A backup of those drivers can be a safeguard in case of computer problems, for example when everything needs to be formatted and newly installed. A driver backup before that process could be used to restore the drivers once the system has been setup again.

Semper Driver Backup is a free backup software for the Windows operating system. Unlike standard driver backup programs it runs the backup on all system devices and components. That’s good on the one hand as it makes sure that everything gets backed up, not so good on the other hand for keeping an overview and managing the device backups.

The drivers are backed up with a click on the backup drivers button in the program interface. The software displays a list of drivers and their inf files in the interface.

One of the biggest issues of this technique is that it does not seem possible to restore a single driver from within the application interface. If you click the Import Drivers button all drivers that have been backed up before will be restored.

While that’s convenient if the hardware of the system has not changed, it could be problematic if hardware has been replaced or added.

Drivers are on the other hand placed in a folder under My Documents. Some are stored with inf files that can theoretically be used to install the drivers, provided that it is possible to identify the correct inf file of a device which may not be as easy as it sounds with more than 200 driver files backed up and cryptic names like netrasa.inf or nettun.inf. It is however possible to use the information displayed by Semper Driver Backup to link files to drivers.

It is not difficulty to use, provided that all you want to do is to backup all system drivers or restore them.

How does Semper Driver Backup compare to previously reviewed applications like Double Driver, Driver Magician Lite or the portable application Driver Backup 2?

The core difference is that Semper Driver Backup can only backup and restore all existing drivers whereas the previously reviewed applications can backup and restore drivers selectively.

Interested users can download the backup software from the developer website. It is compatible with all recent versions of the Windows operating system (via).

Driver Magician Lite offers to do just that: Backup Windows device drivers so that they can be restored whenever they are needed which in turn means no more searching for driver CDs when a driver is needed.

The program comes as a portable version and installer. Probably the most convenient feature of the application is that it marks user-installed drivers in red. Those drivers have been installed by the user of the system after the operating system has been installed. They usually consist of video card, audio, printer and other third party device drivers.

Drivers can be backed up by selecting them in the application and clicking on start backup afterwards. This spawns a folder browser menu to select the folder the drivers will be stored in.

All drivers are stored in a direct format that Windows will recognize if pointed to that location. It is also possible to install the device driver directly from the backup folder with a right-click on the inf file and the selection of Install from the context menu.

All drivers are stored in their own folder to make the identification as easy as possible.

Driver Magician Lite is a handy program for users who want to reinstall, upgrade or install the Windows operating system. The software is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows and available for download at the developer website.

Anyway, some free programs to update Windows drivers exist. We have reviewed Driver Max in the past. The application has made some leaps version wise. It can not only be used to scan for Windows driver updates but also to identify unknown hardware or to perform device driver backups. A click on the check for driver updates button in the updates and identification category will start the scan of the computer system’s hardware.

The results will be displayed on the website of the software developer in table form listing the name of the device as well as the installed version and the latest version in the database. A disk symbol at the end of each line leads directly to the download of the device driver.

The download pages list all downloads for the selected device. There is no mentioning if the drivers are alpha, beta or final drivers and it is recommended to perform a search on a search engine to verify the result. The suggested update for the outdated Intel Chipset Software Installation on the test system turned out to be an alpha driver. A quick search revealed a final driver that was available for download.

The list of downloads could use some filtering options to filter languages and alpha or beta drivers. Still, it is a better alternative than searching for all device driver updates manually. It will at least list the drivers that are not up to date anymore which will narrow down the manual process to a minimum. A free registration is required to use the program.

A similar program is 3DP Chip (read: Computer Driver Updates) which will only scan the most important components of a computer system.

The software application has a surprisingly small size of just 1 Megabyte and runs pretty solid and fast. After the initial scan of the system’s device drivers a backup can be initiated. It is up to the user to backup all device drivers or only the drivers that have been selected. The backup software provides filters to display only OEM or third party drivers as well as only those drivers that have been digitally signed or are fully portable.

The device drivers can be stored on the computer’s hard drive using custom descriptions, filenames, path formats and device path formats. The device drivers will be stored in separate device folders by default. Each folder contains the drivers of that device. This can be a single .inf file or dozens of files that are needed for the device.

Once a device driver backup has been created it can be used to restore that set of drivers on the computer system. You can either restore a single device driver by installing the driver from the directory it was saved in or all device drivers from withing the device driver backup software.

Backup and restoration of backed up device drivers is a quick and easy process which makes Device Driver 2 a perfect companion for a USB device with enough storage space to store the drivers.

The device driver backup software comes with a few command line parameters to automate the backup and restoration process further. There is also a command line builder which is currently only available in Italian language. It should however be relatively easy to use it to create the parameters needed for the desired operation.

A click on the scan button starts a system scan which took only a matter of seconds on my system. All drivers are afterwards listed in a table in the main program window. They can be sorted by name, date, version, manufacturer and several other parameters with additional filters being available from the top menu. It is for instance possible to list only non-Microsoft drivers.

One or multiple drivers can be selected by checking the box in the first column of the table. A click on the Backup button will open a configuration menu where the user can pick a destination folder for the backup.

The Restore button works in the opposite direction. The user has to browse to an .inf file that has been created by a previous backup so that the driver can be restored. There is also the option to save and print a list of all drivers currently installed on the system.

The website of the developer is no longer online. You can download the latest version of Double Driver here from Ghacks instead. Double Driver (666)

Please note that the tool to backup and restore drivers is no longer updated, which means that it will eventually become incompatible. Alternatives are Driver Magician Lite or Slim Drivers.